Irreal

An odd but very useful feature of Emacs is (file) local variables. This allows you to specify certain Emacs variables either on the first line of a file or at the end in a special Local Variables block. Typical uses include specifying line lengths, indention amounts, and other formatting features and specifying how to compile the file so that the compile command will work correctly.

I described it as odd because I first encountered the Local Variables block before I became an Emacs user and I thought it was very odd to see that sort of thing in a C source file. Regardless, local variables can be very useful.

One problem with them is what happens if you change a value or when you first add them to a file. How do you get Emacs to recognize the new value? I always solved this problem by reloading the file with Ctrl+x Ctrl+v (find-alternate-file) but there are other, better ways.

Grant Rettke over at Wisdom and Wonder points to two methods for reevaluating local variables. One method re-runs the hooks associated with the file and the other method doesn’t. Hop on over and take a look; it will take you less than a minute.

I try to use ehsell as much as I can when I need to drop into the shell. That way, I stay in Emacs and still have the power of Emacs available. The other day in a post about something else, I saw this powerful use of cd mentioned.

You can cd into a directory on another machine like this

cd /ssh:aineko:org

This logs me into my iMac in the ~/org directory using tramp. Something like

cd /ssh:aineko:

is the same as connecting to aineko with SSH. If you need to log into the remote server as a different user, use something like

cd /ssh:different_user@aineko:

It’s not quite completely transparent but it does make remote machines seem like they’re mounted locally. Very nice. And powerful.

Just got my Mastering Emacs update. Mickey has put out version 2 to incorporate new material reflecting changes in Emacs 25.1. The upgrade is free to current owners; You should be getting an email from Mickey. If you don’t already have a copy and you’re an Emacs user, you’re in luck. Mickey is making the new edition available for just $25. That’s a 37% discount so follow the link and get yours now.

[Editorial Note: Sorry about the lousy formatting. Org2blog is misbehaving again so I had to paste the HTML into the WordPress editor.]

Ben Maughan over at Pragmatic Emacs has a really nice tip. It’s one of
those things that you (or at least I) don’t think about but once you
see the tip, you think, “That’s just what I need.” The idea is to kill
the current buffer without asking.

Maughan asks how many times you’ve called kill-buffer via
【Ctrl+x k】and wanted to kill some buffer other than the one you’re in. I can’t
ever remember doing that. Maughan provides a one line fix to your
init.el that will just delete the current buffer without asking.
Perfect.

If you think you’ll sometimes want the old behavior and don’t want to
remember kill-buffer, it’s trivial to add a bit of Elisp that
calls kill-this-buffer unless the universal argument is provided in
which case it calls kill-buffer. Bind this to
【Ctrl+x k】 and you have the best of both worlds.
Here’s some code that does that

(defun jcs-kill-a-buffer (askp)
  (interactive "P")
  (if askp
      (kill-buffer (funcall completing-read-function
                            "Kill buffer: "
                            (mapcar #'buffer-name (buffer-list))))
    (kill-this-buffer)))

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x k") 'jcs-kill-a-buffer)